camden | books | Murder On The Darts Board | : one man’s journey to the heart of dartness. By Justin Irwin. Portico£9.99

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Published: 15 May 2008

Justin Irwin with darts legend Bobby George (left)

Camden books | Murder On The Darts Board | review of Justin Irwin's book

HE was a high-flying executive in the charity world, but Justin Irwin’s intentions were clear the day he came home with a non-slip mat and wipeable scoring board.
Here was a man determined to go pro in the sport that all middle-class executives like him were mad for – darts.
That’s right, Irwin was about to chuck in his all in a bid to emulate his childhood hero, Keith “The Fella” Deller, and make it as a professional darts player. Out went haring across the country to high-pressure meetings and 14-hour days; in came driving across the country to play 20 hopeless minutes of darts in smoky, beery social clubs.
It sounds ridiculous and when the former ChildLine director was outed by the media as a wannabe darts professional with an eye on qualification for the World Championships, many in the sport thought it was.
“Things were going rapidly downhill… before I had played my first proper tournament I was already a figure of hate,” writes Irwin in Murder On The Darts Board, his real-life account of 12 months’ playing “arrers”.
Except Irwin wasn’t playing at it: this balding thirtysomething really did throw himself into it.
Shooting arrows in the Caledonian and Barnsbury League, practising his action for six hours a day in his front room at the Angel and driving miles to play in high-intensity all-comer extravaganzas proved Irwin’s commitment. So what if his determination to come up with a moniker fit to share the stage with darts’ greats Martin “Wolfie” Adams and Steve “The Bronze Adonis” Beaton resulted in the tag: Justin “Bachelor of Darts” Irwin.
And who cares if this Guardian-reading graduate stabbed himself in the lip with his own dart on his Cally League debut or drove 130 miles to Gloucester only to be roundly beaten in 20 short minutes by a 14-year-old?
After all, this is the story of “One man’s journey into the heart of dartness” (ouch) and Irwin deftly records every minute of it, duff throws and all. It’s such an arduous journey that by the time Irwin makes it to those qualifiers at the New Walton Club in the glamorous North-east, he declares: “Nobody could dent the feeling that I had a right to be there.”
And having lived every missed throw, chalked every defeat and cheered every victory with this sometimes conceited, occasionally star-struck but always single-minded wannabe, it’s hard to disagree.
CATHERINE ETOE
• Murder On The Darts Board: one man’s journey to the heart of dartness.
By Justin Irwin. Portico £9.99

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